


Threat Assessment

by PrairieDawn



Series: Welcome to 1951 [3]
Category: MASH (TV), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: (it's a thing), 1 Corinthians 12:12-27, Bleeding, F/M, Life Threatening Illness, M/M, Period Typical Esperphobia, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Sexism, Spies, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-09-20 06:18:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17017335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrairieDawn/pseuds/PrairieDawn
Summary: Walter Bedell Smith, head of the CIA in 1951, travels to the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital to investigate the connection between some unusual reports coming from the CO and his operative, Colonel Flagg.  He hopes his visit will shed some light on  the incredible events of the last three days.





	1. In which Beetle Smith meets a real live alien

**Author's Note:**

> Walter Bedell Smith is as close as I could get from the biography. He's a jerk. But sometimes you have to work with the jerk you have.

April 20, 1951, Tokyo

General Walter Bedell, “Beetle” Smith, current head—for his sins--of the steaming trash heap that was the United States Central Intelligence Agency, acknowledged the knock on the door of his beige, utilitarian Tokyo office with a grunted, “Come.”

His assistant, a spot shined, naively patriotic twenty-five year old lieutenant, said, “Sir, you asked me to forward messages relating to the planetary relocation directly to you.”

“Don’t tell me what I told you to do! Just have out with it.” Since the afternoon two days ago when the _stars in the damned sky_ scrambled themselves the entire intelligence community had been collectively wetting itself. It had taken only a few hours for astronomers to declare that the stars had not changed, Earth had “merely” been moved nearly sixty light years and plopped down, along with the moon, around some other star that didn’t even have the dignity of a name. 

The lieutenant cleared his throat a little nervously. He was charged with filtering the crackpots from the genuine leads on the problem, a task he completed earnestly, but without complete success. And Beetle was tired of investigating baloney. At last he ventured to speak. “A General Clayton in Seoul has received a message from a colonel in charge of a MASH unit. The message references HR 7783.”

The catalog designation of the star Earth was currently and inexplicably circling had not yet been released to the general public, though a few astronomers had independently identified it. It wasn’t an ironclad indicator that something relevant was up, but it might be worth investigating. Beetle pulled out a file folder from the neat stack on the corner of his desk. “Would it be Colonel Potter of the 4077th?”

“The same. Do you know him?”

Beetle shook his head. “I know of him. Steady guy. Not given to flights of fancy. What does the General want?”

“He’s planning to go out to investigate a situation Potter believes is relevant to the relocation, sir. He said the situation may be time sensitive, and wished to know whether you would accompany him.” 

He pressed a finger across his lips and opened the 4077th’s file folder to lay the contents on his desk. A photograph of a silver and black device he didn’t recognize. Another of swatches of fabric, black and gold, streaked with dark stains. The biochemists at the Pentagon were holding on to the original and hadn’t yet sent a report to him on it. A report, wildly fanciful, written by the procurer of the fabric and the photo. The operative seemed a little unhinged, or at least largely ignorant of the formal, measured language that ought to be used in this kind of report. Flagg. Samuel Adams Flagg. “Tell him—tell him to make his travel plans with the assumption that I will meet him in Seoul tomorrow morning. Then arrange a flight out.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Also, get me Agent Samuel Adams Flagg’s full file. I’d like to look it over before I go. Dismissed.”

The lieutenant saluted his way out of Beetle’s office. This time last week, Beetle Smith would not have been able to imagine a greater threat to global stability than the current Soviet dictator, Josef Stalin, and by extension, the toxic philosophy of authoritarian communism. Allowing that monster to remain in power at the close of the war had been a grave mistake. But now the entire world had been picked up and moved an unimaginable distance for an unfathomable purpose. The situation was something more at home in those ridiculous pulp novels on the newsstands, with the rocket ships and scandalously clad women in the arms of monsters on the covers.

For all practical purposes in the short term, the fact that the constellations had changed posed a minor threat to navigation, easily corrected by the issuance of new star charts, which he heard were already in production. No less a figure than Albert Einstein had briefed the joint chiefs just yesterday. From Beetle’s point of view, the medium term concerns were whether the change in their parent star would cause changes in the weather that might disrupt agriculture and lead to more wars around the world, and more urgently, Einstein’s final warning, which had echoed in a conference room that went absolutely silent in its wake. 

Einstein had looked at each of them in turn and said, “The mathematics is clear. We have been moved nearly sixty light years, without changing our inertia, our orbital mechanics, or our rotational period. We have been placed at a comfortable distance from a star very similar to the sun we used to circle. This is utterly impossible and as such, not an accident. It is therefore of paramount importance that we attempt to determine who has placed our world here, and why.”

Who has placed our world here, and why.

He returned the folder to his desk drawer, swept the remainder of the file folders on the same general topic into the same drawer, and locked it. He had preparations to make if he were to make the six am flight to Seoul. He took a swig of Pepto Bismol without bothering to measure, grabbed his coat, and headed out of his office. 

*

Beetle Smith stood on the packed earth of Kimpo’s yard, General Clayton beside him, while they waited for their driver to appear. He had dismissed his lieutenant as a precaution; it seemed wise to limit the number of people who would be privy to whatever Colonel Potter had discovered, at least until he had a chance to assess the level of threat it posed.

A short, bespectacled Corporal in a dress uniform pulled up, hopped out of his jeep and approached them. He stopped in front of them to salute smartly. “Corporal O’Reilly, sirs,” he said. “Here to take you to Uijeongbu.”

Beetle and Clayton returned the salute in unison. “Very good, Corporal. I am General Smith, Special Operations. This is General Clayton.” The two of them settled into the rear seats of the jeep, careful to brace themselves as the jeep started off over the rough and muddy road to Uijeongbu. The dress uniform was an interesting choice on the part of the corporal or whoever had sent him. An attempt to impress upon the generals the seriousness of the situation?

Beetle was already familiar with Corporal O’Reilly. The incident that had earned him his nickname had garnered a fair amount of interest in intelligence circles. Further observation suggested the little psychic was likely too fragile for full time intelligence work, like almost every other similarly gifted fellow in the goddamn military. He also knew from a review of the files that the 4077th was infested with misfits, cross dressers, and sexual deviants, which gave him pause given that such traits could be used as blackmail by the communists in addition to indicating a certain moral terpitude, but in this case, he needed to go where the information was. Flagg’s recent report included accusations that the 4077th had aided and then hidden potential enemies of the United States, including a space alien. Flagg had demanded that the little corporal be court martialed for breaking his nose—and that was a story he greatly wished to hear from the other side. However, if he asked now he would be unlikely to get a straight answer, so he held his tongue.

Corporal O’Reilly pulled over without warning. After a beat he looked behind him at the two generals, took out a map and pointed his face in its general direction, though why the corporal would need a map to locate Uijeongbu when he’d been living there for over a year escaped Beetle. “What are you doing, Corporal?” he asked.

The silence was a little too long, and was broken not by an answer, but by the corporal starting the jeep and pulling back onto the road. “Avoiding a communist patrol, sir,” he said once they were moving again.

“I see,” Beetle said, though he didn’t. “So you wouldn’t happen to know anything about what Colonel Potter was so excited about, would you?”

“I would, sir.” The corporal did not turn around.

“Care to enlighten me?”

O’Reilly was quiet while he negotiated a tricky turn on the deeply rutted road. “We’re trying to save the world, sir,” he said.

“Being a bit dramatic, aren’t you?” Clayton said, his voice challenging, almost derisive.

“No sir, I’m not, sir.”

The number of times the O’Reilly kid could get “sir” into a sentence was beginning to wear on Beetle. “Can you give me a little more than that?”

“Colonel Potter and Commander Spock want to tell you themselves.”

“I don’t recognize that name,” he said. It was short enough and unfamiliar enough to be Korean, but the consonants didn’t sound quite right. Dutch, maybe? “You working with a Navy man?”

“Naval aviator. Sort of.”

They pulled into the camp and were immediately met by three men, two he recognized as Colonel Potter and Corporal Klinger, though the latter was in proper uniform rather than the ladies’ dresses Flagg said he generally wore. The third man stood beside Klinger, a captain by his bars, in fatigues that did not quite fit him. He was perhaps thirty five or forty, with bright blue eyes and an intense expression. He bounced onto his toes twice, a nervous habit, perhaps?

All three men saluted, though the third man, the one in what might be a borrowed uniform delivered a salute that, while not disrespectful, seemed unpracticed. A civilian? He returned the salute sharply and allowed the corporal to help him out of the jeep, wincing at the sudden twinge in his gut. Corporal O’Reilly left him to take their bags. 

The fellow in the possibly borrowed uniform rushed forward. “You don’t look so good. You feeling all right?” His accent was southern, Georgia perhaps, but overlaid with years of something else he couldn’t quite identify.

Beetle waved him off irritably. So, a surgeon then, in all likelihood. “Just a bit of digestive trouble. I’ve had it for years.”

The captain humphed. “I’ll bet you have. I swear, you people are barely past leeches.”

“Bones,” Potter said, warning in his tone.

Klinger interjected with a belated introduction, “Sirs, Colonel Sherman Potter and Lieutenant Commander Leonard McCoy, M.D.”

“A Navy man,” Clayton huffed. 

Beetle wondered if he were associated with this Commander Spock that O’Reilly mentioned. 

“What are you doing out of uniform?” Clayton asked the Navy doctor.

The Navy doctor shrugged. “My uniform isn’t fit to wear. Captain Pierce was kind enough to loan me fatigues.”

“I see.” He turned to Klinger. “Have proper Navy uniforms been ordered for this officer?”

“Not yet, sir,” Klinger said. “I am working on the problem.”

“Come with me,” Colonel Potter said, ushering them toward the largest of the pop up buildings to lead him to his office. Corporal O’Reilly rejoined them. Several folding chairs had been put out in the cramped space to make an impromptu conference room. Klinger made himself scarce, leaving the two generals in the company of O’Reilly, Dr. McCoy, and Potter. O’Reilly held the door for a tall fellow who swung in on crutches, one leg of his fatigues tied closed over an above knee amputation. He tucked the crutches under his arms to offer a crisp salute, which drew Beetle’s eye up toward the man’s angular face and drew attention to its waxy color and the points on the man’s ears. Beetle thought he might need to sit down.

Clearly Flagg had reason to believe the 4077th was hiding aliens. “And who are you?” Beetle said, his question coming out his mouth half a challenge.

“Commander Spock. Starfleet. The doctor and I are not members of the local branch of the Navy, as I am sure you have surmised, but our ranks are roughly equivalent to those of naval aviators here.”

Clayton perched on the edge of the desk behind him, chuckling. “Well, this takes the cake, Potter. You’ve got aliens in your camp!”

Beetle dropped into a folding chair, his hand rising to jam itself surreptitiously into the space just below his ribcage. He should have been expecting something like this, really. “Did you do this? Did you move the world?”

“Alien,” McCoy corrected. “The captain and I are as human as you are. And we’re just as stuck as you, too. This wasn’t our doing.”

“That’s what you say,” Beetle snapped.

Commander Spock threw McCoy a look and continued, “I am uncertain as to the degree that we may trust you and your organization, General Smith, as the operative we encountered previously endangered the life of my captain in a misguided attempt to interrogate him.”

“You’re on our planet, I’d say we get to decide whether we can trust you,” Smith returned.

McCoy leaned toward Beetle and raised his voice. “If the corporal here hadn’t stopped Flagg before he could assault Jim, he probably would have bled to death.”

Smith turned to Potter, who nodded, his lips pressed into a tight line. “Captain Kirk suffered severe thoracic injuries as a result of an encounter with an antipersonnel mine. Flagg decided he would shake him out of an induced coma to interrogate him.”

That sounded like the impulsive agent the reports seemed to suggest. However, there were times and places in which risking the life of a probable enemy was justified. Beetle needed to get a picture what was going on. “All right, would someone give me a run down of what’s going on here? Colonel?”

“Three days ago three men appeared—” Potter trailed off to look at O’Reilly.

“In a flash of light, sir,” the corporal supplied.

“In a flash of light, along the road leading from Kimpo to Uijeongbu. The men set off an antipersonnel mine almost immediately, severely injuring Captain Kirk and Commander Spock. Surgeons Hunnicutt and Pierce, along with Corporal O’Reilly, transported them here to the 4077th, where Spock and Kirk underwent emergency surgery for life threatening injuries. Spock, care to take it from here?”

The alien nodded acknowledgment. “Sir. The captain, the doctor, and myself were traveling to Tokyo on October second, 2270 old Earth dating system for an official event when we were diverted to the time and location Colonel Potter describes. Examination of changes in the constellations and the resonances of certain metals indicate that our abduction and the transposition of this planet to its current location in spacetime occurred at the same moment, to within measurement error.”

“Wait a minute, abduction?” Beetle sat up straighter. The fact that the alien also regarded the transposition of Earth to be intentional was interesting. 

“Indeed. However, the most likely culprits are an extraordinarily powerful race who are known to create entire universes for reasons that are beyond our understanding—”

“I think they’re bored,” McCoy interjected.

Spock turned toward his companion, one eyebrow raised. “A valid hypothesis. The fact remains that their interference is unlikely to be undone, and we have a much more immediate threat to consider at present.” Wherever these two came from, they acted as though they had been colleagues for a long time.

“And that would be?” Beetle prompted. 

“The planet on which we are standing has been relocated to territory belonging to a regime hostile to the Federation and by extension, to Earth.”

“Hostile to any civilized world,” McCoy added. “You know how they treat the populations on planets they conquer. Forced labor, extraction of natural resources—”

Spock nodded agreement. “Their current leadership bears a significant resemblance to the Stalinist regime currently at odds with your own people.”

“I see.” He tapped one finger to his chin in thought. “This is a lot to swallow,” he said. “But just looking at the sky lately has been a hell of a lot to swallow. I assume you have proof of some kind for me?”

“We can provide evidence of my nonhuman origins, of our technological advancement, and to a limited extent, of the threat posed by our current location within the quadrant. As we were relocated here with only the items on our persons and at the present time have no way of contacting our government, should it even exist in this timeline, the amount of proof we can provide is limited.”

“Right. How about you show me some of this advanced technology of yours.” He moved to stand and doubled over in spite of himself, suddenly nauseated. He swallowed what he was sure was blood trying to come up. Potter and the time traveling surgeon rushed toward him to direct him back to his seat. “How long have you been bleeding from the GI tract?” McCoy said. He reached into a black leather bag to pull out a silvery cylinder and began to wave it over his body.

“What is that thing?” Beetle said, trying to swat it away. McCoy dodged his efforts as though he had experience with attempts to evade treatment.

“Portable medscanner,” McCoy said. He pulled out a black, mirror like object and perused it. “You’re a bit anemic. Colonel Potter, can we get him on penicillin for fifteen days and…Colonel, do you have tetracycline yet?”

“We have some Terramycin. Oxytetracycline.”

“That ought to work. Both antibiotics, fifteen days. Whatever your standard dosages are.”

“Why?” Potter asked.

“To clear the H. pylori infection. Spock, scanner’s on redline. I know you’ve been up working on the subspace radio, but I could use some kind of power dock for the regenerators and the scanner.”

“I will begin as soon as these discussions are concluded,” Spock replied, somewhat pointedly.

McCoy nodded. “I’m going to see if Jim’s up to meeting with our guests.”

“I will accompany you.”

The two visitors left. Potter turned to Clayton. “They wanted to give us a chance to talk without them.”

Clayton looked far too relaxed, perched on the edge of Potter’s desk with his hand loosely clasped in front of him. “And to take a chance to talk about us, I don’t doubt. So, you’ve spent time with them. Do you think they’re being honest with us?”

“McCoy’s a good man and an excellent surgeon, though it’s clear even to me that he’s not familiar with our surgical equipment.” Potter said. “Spock is brilliant, if a little odd. But then, what can you expect. And he bleeds bright green. I saw him when he came in with his leg all blown to hell. As to whether they’re being honest, I think they’re being as honest as they can be, under the circumstances.”

Beetle kept his seat for the moment. “I don’t like the idea of trusting some space alien with our future. I’d really like to have a specialist come in to ask them all some questions. It’s only their word that they didn’t cause this whole mess.” 

Potter shook his head. “And I’m telling you that when they got here two of them were dying. We may still lose Kirk unless we’re careful and lucky.”

O’Reilly bit his lip. Started to speak. Stopped. Stepped forward, determination on his face, fists balled at his sides. “You can trust Spock. He’s a good person. He just acts different.” 

“Radar ought to know,” Potter said.

“Oh?” Beetle said.

“They’ve been working together on a radio receiver round the clock the last day and a half.”

“So you think they’re on the up and up about this threat?” He asked the corporal, hoping to make him squirm a little. The captain might be too fragile to interrogate, and the alien, who knew how tough he might be, but the fact he was hopping around on crutches and building radios only three days after having his leg blown off said something about the creature’s constitution. He’d corner the flight surgeon later, but for now, this kid should be easy to intimidate, and it sounded like the alien might have let some thing slip, accidentally or on purpose, while they built their machine.

“Sir,” O’Reilly said. “They’re not the ones who found out about the aliens up there. The ones who are coming. That was me.”

“Well, then, Radar O’Reilly, how about you enlighten me?” He emphasized the kid’s nickname.

Radar stuck out his chin, a defiant Cassandra, but his fingers still busied themselves worrying at the hem of his uniform top. “The aliens are going to destroy San Francisco. Maybe some other cities. In about three weeks.”

“And how exactly do you know that?”

Radar twisted his hands together, looked away, but forced himself to look back up at Beetle. “Because BJ’s-- Captain Hunnicutt’s--wife and baby are there and I, um, saw it happen. Sometimes I see stuff before it happens.”

“I am aware of your propensity for prediction, Corporal,” Beetle told him. Give the boy something to think about. “Any other details you can provide would be of value.”

“Um. The aliens are tall, and hairy, and they dress kind of like the samurai in comic books and they have laser guns. And Spock says they’re called Klingons. That’s all I know.”

“Well, anything else occurs to you, tell me.” Offhand he wondered if one of the experimental truth drugs they were working on might knock something loose up there, get them more information to work with.

“Sir,” O’Reilly said, casting nervous looks at Beetle all the while. “I gotta get some stuff together for the meeting.”

“Dismissed,” Potter told him and he scuttled out, but not before taking one more searching look at Smith from the doorway.

“That boy’s wasted here,” Smith told Potter. “I’ve half a mind to have him reassigned.”

Potter shook his head. “Over my dead body. He stays right here. And so do those space navy boys, at least until the captain’s in better shape.”

“I think you forget who the general is, here,” Beetle said, hauling himself to his feet. So, alien invaders, not of the same species as the tall, pale fellow, and a possible attack on San Francisco. And a three week time frame. Terrific. The stress could kill him before the three weeks were out at this rate. “Take me to Post Op. I’d like to meet this Kirk for myself.”


	2. In which Kirk chairs a meeting from his hospital bed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Smith discusses strategy with Kirk and company in Post Op, then corners Radar with questions and orders.

Jim Kirk was tired of looking at the same damn wall he’d been looking at for the last day and a half. Every breath hurt, an aching, burning tug that kept him from completely filling his lungs. The gorgeous blonde nurse, Houlihan, her name was, had placed an antique glass thermometer in his mouth with the admonition not to talk lest he break it. 

“You’re due for morphine,” Houlihan told him. Kirk shook his head. He needed to be clearheaded for this meeting with the American generals. The nurse took out the thermometer, squinted at it, shook it down. “Normal. That’s good. The Communists are officially blaming us for moving the stars around, you know.”

“Moving the Earth, you mean, Major?” Kirk said. His voice failed to carry beyond the bed.

She frowned at him, hands perched on her hips. “Their words, not mine.”

Kirk nodded. “They’ll push hard. As long as they can. So they’re ahead when the war finally has to stop.”

“You think they’ll stop?”

“The Klingons will either come in hard and fast to put in their own people, or they’ll ally themselves with Stalin. Depends on how Stalin receives them.” He paused a little longer, to take a deeper breath. “Can’t let them ally with Stalin.”

The door opened, admitting Spock and Bones. The bond flared brighter in the back of his mind, a fireplace glow that warmed more than the extra blanket pulled up around him against the spring chill. Kirk suppressed a twinge of sorrow and misplaced guilt at the sight of Spock’s crutches and missing limb. Nothing to be done for it, and Spock was getting around well, all things considered. Certainly better than Kirk was. The only moving he was doing was when the nurses carefully turned his body to keep him from getting bedsores.

Bones pulled out the medscanner, frowned at it and passed it to Spock. “It’s dead.”

Spock tucked it into an olive drab canvas satchel he must have scrounged from somewhere. He wasn’t wearing the beanie Radar gave him, a fact that was both a relief and a bit unnerving. “Captain,” he said, the use of his title a signal that they were on the clock, as such, and that they weren’t entirely in friendly territory. Kirk worried at his ring with his thumb. Spock settled into a chair at his side, not touching, but offering a thread of support through the bond. _Do not trust General Smith._

Kirk sent back acknowledgment. Bones sat on the opposite side of the bed, next to Houlihan. “Can I see his chart, Nurse Houlihan?”

She passed it to him. “Thank you,” McCoy said. “Spock, once this meeting is over how long will it be until you can charge my instruments?”

“I believe I can produce power conversion equipment within twelve hours, provided the materials are available. The time required to charge each item will depend on the available power sources and the quality of the connections.”

“So I could be stuck with local equipment for a day or more. Terrific. Nurse Houlihan, you and Hawkeye will need to help me keep an eye on him. I’m a little rusty with stethoscopes and glass thermometers.”

“We’ll take good care of your captain and you know it,” Houlihan snipped, but she was smiling.

McCoy turned to Spock. “Thirty minutes and if his heart rate goes up too high we finish early. Can you steady him?”

Spock looked down at him. Kirk did not like the worry lines creasing his husband’s brow. “I will do so. I suggest we focus first on the nature of the Klingon threat and the need to build the transmitter as quickly as possible. We have, as mentioned, roughly three weeks to get the transmitter built, get a message sent out to Starfleet Command, and get help back here.”

“How many days from Earth are we at warp?” Kirk asked. 

Spock considered. “If we are in our home universe and the translocation has not disrupted the spatial substructures, six point one days at cruising speeds and four point four at maximum warp.”

“And if Scotty’s bringing the Enterprise?”

“Three days, fourteen hours, assuming the Enterprise is in Earth orbit.”

Houlihan snorted. “Scotty must be some driver.”

“When the situation calls for it,” McCoy answered her. “Sometimes when it doesn’t.”

The door opened, admitting Radar, Potter and both generals. Potter introduced them, the ruddy faced and white haired General Clayton, who took a seat on a folding chair a little out of the way, and General Smith, a grim, pale man who moved as if he had swallowed a hedgehog. Radar placed Smith in a chair at Kirk’s beside, next to Spock. He and Potter stood at the end of the bed. Radar kept his eyes on Smith and fidgeted.

“Gentlemen, I hear that there is little time to waste,” Smith said. “What can you tell me about the inhabitants of the region of space in which Earth finds itself?”

Kirk encouraged Spock to summarize with a slight gesture of the hand that wasn’t taped down.

Spock took his cue. “The Klingon Empire comprises between nine and eleven core planets and roughly three times that many occupied worlds—the numbers change frequently and our intelligence is lacking. Klingons are governed by a traditionalist, military aristocracy that requires new worlds to conquer. In addition, the empire suffers chronic food and energy shortages, which it alleviates by occupying inhabited worlds, stripping those worlds of natural resources and employing the population in agricultural slave labor. Earth of the mid twentieth century has an unusually large amount of highly productive arable land, which suggests this is the purpose to which the empire will put the planet should it be conquered.”

“That’s almost good news,” Kirk said to Smith.

At the general’s questioning look, he continued. “Earth is too rich a world to lay waste. The Klingons have weapons that could burn everything from orbit. But they need the planet healthy.” He’d talked too much already. He stretched a little, trying to make space for a little more air in his lungs. Spock glanced his direction, concerned, and McCoy clearly caught the gesture, because he reached down to take a pulse.

Smith nodded while writing in a notebook balanced on his knee. “So what of the reports that some of our cities will be destroyed?”

Spock replied, “Using low yield mass drivers, as many as five cities may be destroyed without causing a drop in global temperatures lasting more than a few months. To prevent catastrophic damage to the climate, the Klingons will have to limit themselves to no more than fifteen strikes.”

Kirk nodded agreement. “They also prefer personal combat to planetary bombardment. Hand to hand. Street fighting.” Kirk had to stop talking for a moment. He’d prefer to relay his words through Spock, but did not want to alert Smith to their alternate mode of communication unless he had to.

“Would you like your morphine now?” Houlihan asked.

“No, thank you Major. I need to stay sharp,” Kirk told her.

Spock reached forward to wrap one hand around his wrist. “Save your strength, Captain. We have intercepted communications that indicate that at least one Klingon vessel already knows of the planet’s presence. When they come in force, which they will do, they will demand immediate surrender.”

Smith’s eyes locked onto Spock’s pale fingers. He opened his mouth as though to remark upon it, but after a pause, said, “I do not intend to surrender, and I’m sure President Truman doesn’t either,” Smith said, punching an emphatic finger into his own knee.

Spock acknowledged his gesture with deferential nod. “It is possible that the Klingons will attempt to ally themselves with the Soviet bloc. The sudden appearance of this Earth gives them little time to prepare, but they will have access to historical materials from our timeline, and will therefore have a great deal of insight, should they choose to avail themselves of it.”

“So we have to get your Federation involved and quickly,” Clayton concluded.

Kirk regained his voice. “And we have to convince the Organians to let them.”

Smith looked as though that hedgehog in his belly had stared doing calisthenics. “And who the hell are the Organians?”

Kirk sympathized. “Another group of powerful aliens who hold sway over this region of space. They enforce a truce between the Klingon Empire and the Federation. According to that truce, this planet resides a few light years within Klingon controlled space.”

“The longer we’re out there in the black, the more technologically advanced meddling aliens who think they’re morally superior we find,” McCoy said. “It’s damned annoying.”

“So we’re coming up against space aliens with ships that can rain hellfire down on our cities and your people won’t even be allowed to help because of a damn treaty?” Smith pressed his heels to his forehead. “I need am aspirin.”

McCoy and Potter both shook their heads. “Not with your stomach, sir,” Potter said.

Smith glared at him.

“So I guess the question is whether we want to become these aliens’ slaves or go down swinging,” Clayton said.

“I say we go down swinging,” Smith answered him.

“I agree,” Houlihan said, earning a glower from the general for talking out of turn.

Spock had not yet released Kirk’s wrist, a situation which was drawing Smith’s puzzled or perhaps suspicious attention. He hadn’t even been out of bed yet and living in this century was already giving him a paranoid streak. He didn’t like it. “Which is why the transmitter must be built as quickly as possible, and here,” Spock said.

“Why here?” Smith asked.

Spock enumerated, “Because I know how to build it, the captain’s health is too fragile to allow him to be moved, and neither the doctor nor I are willing to be separated from him. In addition, placing the transmitter in a large city will make that city a primary target when the Klingons arrive.”

Smith’s eyes moved from Spock’s hand on Kirk’s wrist to meet Spock’s eyes. “I think you’ll go where you’re sent.” Kirk could hear the test in those words.

McCoy stood. “We travel together or not at all.”

“And what makes you think you can make that kind of an ultimatum? You are not exactly sitting in a position of power, here.”

Spock cut him off. “I am the only person who knows how to assemble the transmitter, which is your only potential source of aid. The sooner it is completed, the greater the chance that Starfleet will send aid in time.”

“How do I know they won’t just send an extraction team for you and leave us high and dry?”

Kirk coughed to recapture the room’s attention. “You don’t,” he said, his voice quieter than he’d liked, but its very softness had the effect he was hoping for. The room quieted of necessity. “My ship will come for us. They will do what I ask them to do, regardless of the Federation’s decision. I do not intend to leave this world in the hands of the Klingon Empire.”

“What can one ship do?” Potter asked.

The situation was as near hopeless as a situation could get. The Federation was certain to leave this Earth to suffer under Klingon rule rather than risk war—and the potential consequences the Organians could levy against them. Unless. “We need to get a delegation to Organia. Your people and mine. Show them who you are.”

Spock nodded. “The delegation should include Corporal O’Reilly, Captain Pierce, and Colonel Potter, I believe.”

“We should make a show of strength to these Organians, not send weaklings and sexual deviants,” Smith protested. “Either I will go or I will send someone of suitable rank.”

McCoy visibly paused, some angry protest catching on the tip of his tongue, before saying, “The Organians are noncorporeal pacifists who only wear bodies because humans find it more comfortable to talk to someone with a face. We’re all weaklings to them,” McCoy said. 

“Pacifists,” Smith spat. “You three spin quite a tale. I don’t doubt you’re an alien, and that the two of you are time travelers of some kind or other, but say I let you build this transmitter and you bring another kind of slavery down on us. I have no way of knowing whether this Federation is any better than these Klingons you can’t even prove exist.” He got up from his seat. “I’ll make my decision today. Clayton, O’Reilly, a word.” He gestured for them to follow him out of Post-Op.

Kirk turned his head a little toward Potter when they left. “That could have gone better,” he said. It was getting harder to concentrate again. The morphine made him sleepy and dull witted, but once it really started to wear off, as it was doing now, his body made it clear that it was nowhere near healed. He thought of all the times he had left sickbay while Bones yelled at him to stay and realized that the Doctor could have kept him right where he was just by cutting him off from twenty third century pain medication. Not that he was going to let McCoy know that if he didn’t already.

 _I’m sure he does,_ Spock remarked. 

A muzzy warmth spread through Kirk. He relaxed into it, but caught himself before he started to drift toward sleep. _Not yet. Give me a minute._ Aloud, he said, “General Smith isn’t used to being told what to do. And we’re asking a lot of him. Building that transmitter here means putting it where the Communists could find it or blow it up by accident.”

“It may be best to plan for the possibility that we will get no help with materials from the General.”

Potter shook his head. “There’s no in between with him. He’ll either give you what you need or drag you off to the Pentagon.” He kept looking toward the door.

Spock asked, “Dr. McCoy, what is the soonest it would be safe to move the captain by helicopter?”

McCoy winced. “Safe and helicopter should never be uttered in the same sentence.” He shrugged, then sighed. “Two days. Three if it’s to be ground transport instead.”

“Then we begin the work here.”

*

Radar had no desire whatever to be alone in a room with two generals. Smith especially had the same contempt, the same view of people as means to an end, as Flagg, but he was more controlled, more aware of himself, and a hell of a lot smarter. He spent way too much of his time with his calculating gaze fixed on Radar. It made him feel a little like a chicken being picked out for tonight’s dinner. He had a stomach ache he wasn’t entirely sure belonged to him.

He played the couple of reel to reel tapes they’d made of the messages they’d intercepted, both from the Federation and from the Klingons and provided written translations of the latter. “I don’t they don’t prove much. Colonel said you can have these tapes. We’ll be listening whenever we can.”

Smith put on a fatherly voice. “All right, son, I need you to tell me everything you know about this whole situation. I can’t trust those men. They might be American, they might not, but whatever they are, they aren’t our people. Understand?” _Kid knows more than he’s letting on I’ll bet._

“Yes, sir,” Radar said. What else could he say? “You don’t know them, sir.”

“So. You think these Klingons or whatever are going to destroy San Francisco. How do you know it’s not these people?” 

“I just…” Think it through, he told himself. And don’t tell him anything he doesn’t already know about you. Or Spock. He’s hungry looking enough already. “I saw the Klingons come in a dream. They dressed in fancy armor and they had laser guns. The uniforms didn’t look the same as the ones we found those guys in.”

Clayton took a turn to speak, “You often see the future when you dream?” 

“No,” he said. “Usually I just get flashes I guess. Right before things happen.” He really didn’t see any distance ahead most of the time. A minute, two, maybe a little longer since he’d been trying to think about what he saw instead of ignoring it as much as possible. Once in a while, though…“Pearl Harbor,” he said.

“You predicted Pearl Harbor,” General Clayton said, his tone derisive. General Smith watched Radar’s expression, looking for lies, looking for him hiding things.

“I guess it was big enough and sure enough. I also saw a few big snowstorms coming when I was a kid. I don’t know what’s coming after the—the Klingons—invade. It’s all dark and cloudy.” Smoke and ashes. “Maybe it’s just not decided.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Maybe we all die.” He’d said it to be intimidating, but if he thought about it, that seemed like a really likely explanation. Radar squirmed under the general’s sharpened focus, feeling more like he was the beetle trapped under Smith’s magnifying glass.

Smith hummed, thoughtful. He paced behind Radar, making him flinch a little every time he passed close. “The one you’ve been spending time with. The alien. Maybe he’s controlling you somehow. Ever think of that? Making you see what he wants you to see.”

“He wouldn’t do that!” Radar said before he realized that wasn’t the best thing to say.

“He wouldn’t. So he could.” _Gotcha, kid._

“You tricked me!” He wanted to leave. “I don’t want to talk to you anymore.”

“I’m afraid you don’t get to walk out on a debriefing, Corporal. Now I’ll tell you now, because I’d guess you already know, I’m going to let them build their transmitter here. Because they’re right. Uijeongbu is more expendable than Tokyo if these Klingons are as real as you think they are. It will also keep them busy, ensure they stay put. But I want you to keep your loyalties in mind. I expect reports from you. Shouldn’t be hard, you’re a radio man. Every day. I’m going to leave you with a one time pad to encode them.”

He wanted Radar to spy on the time travelers? On Spock? Radar clenched his fists at his sides. “But what do you want to know?”

“Anything and everything. They’ll let slip things about where they come from. What kind of place the Federation is. You just send everything you find out. Stick close to them.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Excellent, Corporal. I look forward to hearing from you. Dismissed.” 

“Sir,” Radar said.

“Yes Corporal?”

“This is my room.” 

“Surely you have something to do?”

“I’m supposed to be monitoring the radio. Both radios. For messages and chatter.”

“Right. Clayton?” Smith said. “I’d like to head back to Post Op before we go. I have more questions for these people and I’d rather ask them informally.

One of the somethings poking at Radar took shape. He almost didn’t say anything, but he ought to. He had to. “You should stay in camp until tomorrow, sir.”

“Why, Corporal?”

It was something to do with that stomach ache, that much he knew, but he suspected that if he said so the General would dismiss him. Still, he had a fair suspicion that if the general left today, he wouldn’t make it back to Tokyo alive. “I’m not sure, sir. It’s just not safe for you to leave right now.”

“Well then, I’ll have more time to observe all of you and your new friends. Clayton, why don’t you help Radar listen to the sky. I’m going to try to catch our new friends for a little more informal conversation.” He strode out the door, letting it slam behind him.

“Is he always like that?” Radar asked the other General, who was still leaning against the wall in a casual way he couldn’t imagine Smith ever doing.

Clayton smiled. “Always. I’ve had to put up with him since Tokyo. He grilled me all the way here.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“I’m going to nick a drink from the Colonel’s stash. Want one?”

“No sir, I’m on duty.” He sat down to tune the radio.

“Suit yourself.” Clayton disappeared into Potter’s office to return a few moments later with a small tumbler of something amber colored and pungent. He took the second chair in the room to listen to static with Radar. “Now, I know you want nothing more than to have him out of here. Why did you tell him to stay?”

“I don’t like him, but I don’t want him to die,” Radar said. “He’s sick.”

Clayton nodded. “It’s been a rough week for all of us. Him more than most. I’ll make sure he sticks around for the night, try to keep him out of trouble.” He finished his drink, set it on the back table. “Corporal,” he said, by way of dismissal, and let himself out.

Radar blew out what felt like a breath he’d been holding since they got to his room, put on his headphones, and got to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Smith did actually have severe digestive issues throughout his adult life, which were most likely his eventual cause of death.


	3. In which McCoy and Houlihan drink bad coffee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doctor McCoy and Major Houlihan get to know each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Out a day early because I'll be traveling tomorrow.

Major Margaret Houlihan sat across a narrow Post-Op bed from an actual alien time traveler, who was pretending at marriage with a human man who claimed to captain a spaceship with a crew of over four hundred people. A part of her wondered what the world would come to by the year, what was it? 2270? That such behavior was tolerated. A tiny, crinkling part of her situated somewhere near her heart ached for the poor, frightened looking alien as he clutched his lover’s hand so tight it left wrinkles in the skin. That face was not particularly expressive, but his eyes…she knew fear when she saw it.

She reached down to take Kirk’s pulse. “Eighty-two,” she told Bones.

“I do know how to take a pulse,” he snapped, flashing those intelligent eyes at her.

She rolled her eyes at him, “Well how am I supposed to know that, doctor, you seem so enamored of your flashy little machines. Until they run out of power.”

“I’ve patched that one up while hiding in a blown up building in the middle of a firefight with nothing but strips torn off my uniform.” He chucked his chin at Spock.

“If you two would not mind taking your discussion elsewhere, the captain requires rest,” the alien intoned.

“If you’d like I can give him the morphine now,” she said.

The alien nodded. “That would be acceptable.”

“Don’t I get a say?” Kirk said.

“No, you don’t. Let the nurse do her job,” Bones said firmly. “Major, shall we?” He stood.

Margaret took out the vial of morphine and added it to Kirk’s IV, then turned to Colonel Potter. “Will you be staying?”

“No, I’m going to catch up with the generals. Dr. McCoy, you mentioned providing some drug samples for General Clayton to take back to Bethesda.”

“I did.”

“If you could have those ready for me I’d like to give them directly to General Clayton when he’s not around Smith. I don’t trust spooks, and I’m afraid Smith may disappear them somewhere they’ll do precious little good.”

“Of course, sir.”

Potter headed out the door, leaving Margaret and Bones watching Post Op. Bones headed behind the curtain, tilting his head at her to indicate she should follow. “We shouldn’t leave Post Op unattended, doctor,” she told him.

“Come on, give them the illusion of privacy, why don’t you? We’ll just go behind the curtain. I could use a little help sorting through my bag.” Bones held the thing out to her.

She favored him with an indulgent half-smile, followed him back behind the curtain and pulled it closed behind them so the alien and his lover—she refused to say husband, even in her head—could have a little privacy for whatever wizardry went on between them. Or in case they were kissing. She suppressed a shudder.

Bones took a seat and opened his bag onto the desk to that it lay flat, every item tucked into its proper loop or sleeve. He collected a few shiny devices and set them in a scrounged box. “I’ll take those to Radar and Spock later so they can charge them.”

Margaret touched one of the remaining devices with a finger. “What’s this?”

“Cardioversion kit. For resolving ventricular fibrillation.”

“It brings back the dead?”

“Only the mostly dead.” He touched the two narrow silver devices, leaving them in their loops. “Hyposprays. I’m not willing to part with either of them yet, but here.” He handed her a packet of gauze small enough to fit in her palm. “Start a pile for Clayton with that. Hemostatic gauze.”

Margaret collected an instrument tray from a corner of the room and placed the gauze on it. They both handled the contents of the bag as though they were delicate as glass and precious as diamond. One of the clever, bright orange tourniquets joined the packet of gauze, followed by a tiny packet that looked like it contained suturing silk. “I know you have tourniquets and sutures, but maybe the materials will be worth studying.”

“Maybe,” she said. “What about the drugs?”

“I’m probably better off sending images of the molecular structure than I am sending the drugs themselves, but I’ll see what I can spare. Trouble is all my drugs are in these multidose cartridges.” He picked up an ampule the size of the last joint of her index finger full of clear fluid to show her. “So if I give this one up, for example, I’m not just giving up one dose. I’m giving up eight.”

“What is it?”

“This?” He squinted at the label. “Hyronalin. For radiation poisoning. Not something I’m likely to need but might be useful for you to study. I can spare one ampule of cordrazine…sympathetic stimulant, works like epinephrine but has a longer residence time.” He peered at a few more ampules. “Lexorin, that’s a neurostabilizer, good for concussions and some other stuff. I want to hold on to that for Radar, and it’s an easy one to harvest and purify if I just send the instructions. Here.” He dropped two more ampules into the tray. “Combination of three antibiotics in that one, antiviral in this one, and here.” He pulled out a flat packet. “Blood expander. Just add distilled water.”

“You want to give all of this to General Clayton. Won’t that mess up time or something?”

“Time is pretty well messed up at this point. I’d like to see this stuff making a difference in the field as soon as possible.”

The door smacked open. Both Margaret and Bones leapt out of their chairs. Smith was standing just inside the door. Margaret took note of his shocked expression and turned to see Spock leaning over Kirk’s bed, kissing him lightly on the mouth as he slept. She could hear Bones just behind her. The sound of the curtain sliding on its rings seemed to break Smith out of a sort of trance and he stalked toward the bed.

He glared at the two men, though it was apparent to Margaret even at this distance that Kirk was fast asleep. “Just what is the meaning of this?” he shouted at the alien.

Regardless of her approval or lack thereof for the two men’s relationship, Kirk and the still-injured Spock were her responsibility and no one got to come into her Post Op and rile up her patients. She stalked around the bed to stand between Smith and the two injured men, eyes first on Spock, who looked, if anything, slightly dazed, as if he’d just awakened. Well, prior experience said that he’d be useless for another ten seconds or so.

Spock blinked at Smith without saying a word. He didn’t even do that almost cute little thing with his eyebrow. Bones strode over to Smith, grabbed him by the elbow, and said, “It’s none of your business, sir,” spitting the sir.

“I think it is my business! What kind of world do you come from that lets this kind of degenerate behavior continue? And in military men of rank? I cannot believe that,” Smith sputtered, “person is allowed to captain a ship.”

Bones snarled, “What kind of world? The kind of world that just might save your ass if we are all very smart and very lucky? Now, you will apologize to Commander Spock or I swear to all that’s holy I will punch you in that bigoted mouth of yours.”

Smith glared at Spock, and by extension at Margaret. “Don’t tell me you approve of this—display?”

Margaret folded her arms across her chest. “What I approve or disapprove is irrelevant. These men are patients and my first duty is to safeguard their health. Now unless you can express yourself at a volume appropriate for a hospital ward, kindly see yourself out.”

“Look, woman,” Smith began. Oh and that was all she needed today.

“Out.” She kept her voice pitched low, but her eyes were hard and her finger pointed firmly at the door.

There there was a ringing screech and the PA system came on line. “Incoming wounded, all shifts to the OR.”

Right on schedule. “Go, I’ll keep an eye on these two,” she told Bones. “You know where to go.”

The doctor took off at a brisk jog. Margaret stood her ground. Smith stiffened to his full height. “I could have you court martialed, along with half of this outfit. Communist sympathizers, moral degenerates, and cowards, the lot of you.”

“General.” The voice behind her was quiet but hard. Margaret took a step to the side to allow Spock to speak to Smith directly. “I have no illusions as to our relative positions at this time. However, I ask you to consider the consequences if you allow your emotions to rule your decisions. Your world is in grave danger. The hope it can be saved from Klingon rule is slim, but it exists. Let us help you while there is still time.”

“How can I know that your Federation isn’t just as bad?”

“You cannot. I challenge you to look past your cultural assumptions and ask yourself, have we threatened your people? Have we done harm? If what the corporal sees is the most likely outcome, what are the chances that the people we represent are worse?”

Smith frowned, turned on his heel, and left Post Op just in time for Margaret to hear the shuffling commotion in Pre Op as the first patients were brought in.

*

McCoy took a moment to fold his bag back together before running out the back door where a crowd was beginning to gather near the chopperless helipad. Heads turned toward the faint whirring, the black helicopters like giant insects appearing over the ridge. “Radar called it too early, this time,” Hawkeye said, coming up behind him.

“I don’t know, good not to be out of breath from running when they land, isn’t it?”

Hawkeye shrugged his agreement, then turned to brush by BJ a little closer than just friendly before the first chopper landed. Hawkeye and BJ took the first two soldiers in the open to the air pods on either side of the first copter. Looking at the wounded soldiers strapped into sidecars, most of their bodies completely open to the air, McCoy found himself nostalgic for the transporter. McCoy started toward the patient sitting in the seat next to the pilot and felt himself tugged down by Frank, who despite his faults apparently didn’t want to see him decapitated. He jogged the rest of the way in a half crouch, reaching the patient at the same time as Frank, a good thing since the soldier was both big and none too steady on his feet. He let Frank take the guys legs and let the patient’s head rest against his chest while he held him under the shoulders, grateful that he followed the mandatory strength training regime he’d prescribed the whole crew.

They got him settled onto the stretcher. McCoy’s ankle complained at bearing the heavy weight on the uneven ground, but it held. McCoy ignored the half-whining babble from Frank, something about how overweight their patient was, disparaging his eating habits and parentage and so forth. He tried to pretend that his unwillingness to fight Frank on his asshattery wasn’t simply because carrying this soldier over to the waiting jeep left him with not enough breath to speak.

They lay the stretcher across the back seat for the ride back to pre op. McCoy kept a hand on the fellow’s chest. “My buddy, Wooten, how is he?” the kid kept asking, raising his head to look ahead and behind for the other stretchers, rocking the stretcher with his movements so McCoy was afraid it might slide off the back of the jeep.

“I don’t know. How about you give me your name, son?”

“Joe. Joe Parker.”

“Leonard McCoy.” The kid looked like he had a badly broken leg and arm, both on the same side, like he’d fallen or been thrown some distance. “What happened to you?”

“Don’t know. I got knocked out for a bit.”

“All the better reason not to go wagging your head around. I promise I’ll get you word on your buddy.” He took vitals the old fashioned way while perched on the back of the vehicle, respiration, pulse, a quick check for frank bleeding that could be seen through the uniform. They pulled up to triage. “Parker, Joe,” he told a nurse. “I’ll get this one.”

He cut the kid out of his uniform, grabbed a splint for the fractures. The arm was an open fracture, a bit of bone poking out just above the wrist. He went about the prep, found Radar holding bags of plasma when he was ready to hang them, plucked them out of his hands and moved on once the kid was ready to go. Two buses arrived within the hour, leaving them so swamped they started prepping patients outdoors. 

This kid had a chest wound. McCoy slapped the only chest seal he had onto the kid, then watched helplessly while his lungs filled with fluid from a wound he could neither find nor treat while his equipment sat discharged on a desk in Post Op. All he could do was give the kid enough morphine to take the edge off. Drowning from the inside was a hard way to go. He couldn’t even wait with the kid, not while they were up to their elbows in wounded. Mercifully, an orderly appeared at his elbow. “Father Mulcahy,” he said, crouching beside the boy. “Radar sent me.”

The chaplain, of course. Hard to recognize swathed in off white scrubs. “I’ll thank him later. Can you sit with this one for a while?”

“I’ll stay for as long as he needs me,” Mulcahy said quietly.

He started on his next kid, but Nakahara took his place, chucking her chin at the OR. He nodded, handed off the IV tubing in his hands and zigzagged between the tightly crammed stretchers to the dressing room to change into scrubs.

Frank was already dressed and scrubbing in. McCoy peeled off his fatigues and grabbed a set of scrubs off a peg. His ankle ached from carrying the stretcher, so he sat to change. “Finally decided to join us, Doctor?” Frank sneered when McCoy turned on the sink to lather his hands and arms. McCoy ignored him. “Bet you’ve never seen real war before.”

“I’ve seen plenty,” he grumbled back before following the other doctor, if that were the right word, out the doors to the operating room.

“You take the shoulder wound, Bones. Frank, you’re with me. Houlihan, help Bones out,” Potter said.

“Don’t worry, Doctor, I’ll walk you through it,” Houlihan said, though Bones wasn’t sure whether or not she was teasing.

“I can clean and sew up a shoulder wound, Major,” he said. “Even with these primitive instruments.”

He went to work. Potter was right to give him Houlihan. He suspected she’d seen enough of these surgeries to do one herself in a pinch. He didn’t know the proper names of the needles, the sutures, the instruments. All he had to do was start to speak, or hold up a hand and exactly what he needed was in it. “You’re doing great,” she was saying. “You can put a little more tension on the suture, it won’t break,” and, “It’s the scalpel, not you. Klinger, get us a fresh scalpel, this one’s gone dull.”

Four patients later they hit the mess tent together to take advantage of a lull. McCoy brought her a cup of dark brown caffeine water and whatever the gravy on potatoes thing was today and they ate methodically, for fuel not enjoyment, since enjoyment was more than either of them could expect from an off hours offering of warmed up food that hadn’t been all that good to begin with. McCoy swore insincerely that he would never complain about replicator coffee again.

“Replicator coffee?” Houlihan said. “Sounds atrocious.” But she laughed a little and leaned forward on her arms and it felt pleasant to be the object of someone’s flirtation for a change. “So you’re a flight surgeon,” she prompts.

“Chief Medical Officer. One of two physicians on a ship with a crew of four hundred thirty.” He gulped the lukewarm coffee. “Sure hope they find us.”

“Well, I’m sure a man like you could find plenty of opportunities here.” She smiled at him over her cup, her blonde hair escaping from her bun in wisps around her face.

“Not if the whole planet gets turned into a Klingon slave labor camp.”

“I doubt the Communists would notice the difference.”

McCoy opened his mouth to assure her that they would but remembered that they were in the time of Stalin and Mao, though he couldn’t remember whether the ugliest parts of those regimes were in the recent past, the present or yet to come. “You may have a point.”

She huffed, then shook her head, eyes far away for a moment.

“Major?” he said.

“I keep thinking about it. The Rape of Nanking. The Bataan death march. All those bodies at Auschwitz and Birkenau, stacked up like things, not people. It hasn’t been a good decade for the human race.”

“I suppose not.”

She finished her coffee in a quick draught and grimaced. “Maybe we deserve to be conquered by what were they? Klingons?”

“Don’t say that. Maybe the men who made all those things happen deserve to suffer, but ordinary people? Kids? I don’t believe it.”

“Are—they? That bad?”

McCoy stared into his empty coffee cup. It was speckled with stray grounds. He bobbed half a nod. “Yeah. Easily.”

“That wasn’t the answer I was hoping for. Thanks.”

“Why thanks?”

“Do men in your time generally treat women like they have brains between their ears and stomachs strong enough for bad news?”

“Generally, though I’ve known exceptions. Why wouldn’t we?”

“It’s…refreshing is all.” She stood to take her tray to the small pile stacked beside a trash can. “Best get back. They’ll be needing help in post op.”

He nodded his agreement and followed her back to the building, eyes sneaking appreciative glances at her backside while the rest of him swore to himself that whatever else happened, he’d have her back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rarepair or broTP?
> 
> Not sure yet.


	4. In which we learn that Pepto Bismol is a bad choice to treat a bleeding ulcer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> General Smith's life choices come back to kick him in the gut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK, so, there's some fairly graphic depictions of the effect of a perforated duodenal ulcer in here. Also some discussion of prejudice in a religious context (Mulcahy is not the one being prejudiced). So you know.

The wounded, arriving on schedule as promised by both Radar and Potter, gave Smith cover to watch the three time travelers without anyone free to police his movements. The ship captain was sleeping, so he moved on to the doctor. 

The ill tempered nurse caught him by the elbow as he was entering the operating room. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“I am a general, Major, and the head of the United States Central Intelligence Agency. I do not have to tell you where I am going.” His stomach cramped then, hard and he swallowed the metallic tang in the back of his throat.

She scowled at him, then pointed to to a doorway at one end of the room. “Scrubs,” she said brusquely. “And a mask.”

It would have been within his rights to protest, but under the circumstances, her directive was reasonable, and it would not get in the way of his goal. He skirted the edge of the room to enter a smaller one with sinks at one end and a divided off area like a locker room, with narrow wooden benches and pegs on which cream colored scrubs hung. He stripped down and threw on the scrubs, gave his hands a cursory soaping and returned to the operating room to peer at the masked surgeons, not sure which was which until he gave himself away by muttering, “Metal scissors. I feel like I’m doing arts and crafts.”

“So many holes in this kid’s guts I feel like I’m doing embroidery over here.” He recognized that voice as Hunnicutt’s. 

The one they called Hawkeye replied, “Think I’m going to need to applique a a vein graft on this one’s leg.”

Smith worked his way slowly toward McCoy and the blond nurse. “See you keep out of the way,” she told him when he passed her to stand at the foot of the table. He felt as though he had swallowed a penknife, but he’d left his Pepto in his bags, which would be in the VIP tent about now. 

“You’ll want the #3 silk,” the nurse coached, and McCoy took her advice without a word. He must be out of his depth to take direction from a nurse, even if she was a Major. 

They worked in near silence for twenty minutes, their only conversation directly related to the surgery they were performing, and Smith realized their silence was for his sake. He would be better off leaving, letting O’Reilly, who he’d seen delivering jars of blood, listen to their conversations and report back to him. Disappointed, he left the surgeons to their work. The MASH unit could expect to be overwhelmed for the next few weeks, as the Koreans and Chinese appeared to have taken the changed sky as an omen spurring them forward. They were throwing everything they had at the south, and would probably continue until something made them stop.

He had to sit with his head between his knees for several minutes in the locker room, spitting coffee grounds into a bowl at his feet, glad that no one could see him. He pulled on his uniform slowly, pausing to lean against the wall when spots swam before his eyes. Maybe he’d have a lie down in the VIP tent for a while later. After he’d had a talk with that alien. He’d gotten hold of himself by the time he’d tugged his boots back on, swung by the VIP tent for his bottle of Pepto Bismol and took several large swallows.

He found the alien in the outer office that doubled as a home for the radio and the clerk. He did not bother to knock. He had a right to be anywhere he wished. The alien sat at a long table pushed up against the wall surrounded by electronic components. A row of silvery, futuristic devices sat behind him on the radio table. Smith let his fingers hover over one of them, secure in his fieldwork trained deftness. He could pocket it and the creature would never know.

He picked it straight up, without the slightest bit of scraping against the table. The alien responded without turning around. “Please replace the bone knitter, General.”

“Sharp ears,” he said, aware of the word play. “So, what’s your game?” His head whirled and he decided to pull up a chair, not certain whether it was his ongoing digestive issues or something untoward the alien might be doing to keep him from leaving.

The alien replaced his tools and shifted in his chair to face him. “Game, General?”

“It’s no accident you’re here. So what are you three playing at? What’s really going on?”

“What is really going on is that your world has been placed in a strategically untenable position with no aid save three temporally displaced Starfleet officers. Speculation on the motivations of the beings responsible is not a fruitful use of our time at present.”

“You planning to sell me the Brooklyn Bridge next?” 

“I do not own the Brooklyn Bridge.”

He grabbed the alien’s arm, turning him so they fully faced each other. “This is not a joke!”

The creature tugged his arm away, eyes suddenly wide, breath catching in his throat. He’d gotten a rise out of him. His features smoothed out again, became infuriatingly bland. “You are ill. I should escort you to Post Op so a doctor can examine you.”

Smith waved off his assertion. “Look, you, whatever you are. I don’t like you. I don’t like that you’re here, I don’t like the way you flaunt your homosexual behavior as though it were anything but an abomination, and I don’t like the way you and that surgeon have everyone in this camp wrapped around your little fingers. So I’ll ask you again. What kind of mind control game are you playing at, Commander?”

“I assure you, General, that I am not engaged in games of any kind. I have provided you with a list of materials required for the construction of a subspace transmitter of sufficient strength to reach the communications buoys on the border of Klingon space. If you are not prepared to provide them, I will improvise, but such improvisation will take time we cannot spare.”

Smith stood. He wore his frustration into the radio room floor, pacing back and forth, one fist still jammed into his cramping gut. On the one hand, if the alien were speaking the truth, he needed that transmitter built. But if he were not, he needed to properly interrogate him to determine what was really going on, and the man seemed impervious to intimidation. “I ought to take you into custody.”

“There would be no logical purpose to doing so.” He turned back to his work. “I and my companions are already effectively in the custody of your government. My captain and partner is critically wounded, and neither I nor Doctor McCoy will leave him for the several weeks it will take for him to recover. By that time, the operational parameters will have shifted so as to make this conversation irrelevant. I am at present constructing equipment that will allow me to use available power sources to charge Dr. McCoy’s devices so that they can be used to save the lives of your people. I ask that you either allow me to accompany you to Post Op or leave me to my work.”

“I will find out what you are really up to.” He turned to leave before the infuriating creature could have the last word, but suddenly became too dizzy to stand and fell hard against the doorframe, at the same time vomiting bright, arterial red onto his boots. The alien bolted out of the chair behind him, he could hear the scrape of his crutches. He pushed past Smith and out the door, yelling something he could no longer make out. He sank into the dark.

*

Mulcahy carried a stack of clean sheets into Pre Op, set them on a table and started to pull the soiled sheets off the half dozen beds there. Vision obscured by his load, he turned and ran into someone standing next to the laundry cart. “Oh, sorry. Just a moment.” He dropped the ball of sheets into the cart.

Radar stood in front of him, wringing his hands. “Something on your mind, son?” he said.

“I can’t talk about it here,” he said.

Mulcahy nodded. “Help me with these sheets and we can go back to my tent for a few minutes.”

Radar took a set of clean sheets from the top of the stack and set to work efficiently. Mulcahy stole glances at him while making up the beds. He looked better than he had yesterday, but his eyes under those glasses were still ringed with dark circles and his hands twitched and shook in between the practiced movements of making the bed. Radar finished two beds, Mulcahy four, then Mulcahy caught up with him on their way out the door to rest a hand lightly between his shoulders on their way out. Radar flinched away, a brief, almost involuntary sort of twitch. “Sorry, it’s all right. I’m just wound up today.”

“I think we all are, Radar.”

“Uh oh!” The clerk said. He turned back around, ran into Mulcahy, and dragged a stretcher out from where it rested on it’s side against the wall. “Grab the other end. We’re going to the radio room.”

“What do we need a stretcher for?” Mulcahy asked, but he picked up his end anyway. They carried it still on its side, Radar in front, Mulcahy taking up the rear. It was easier to walk around the building to the end with the offices so they went outside. They were almost upon the door to the radio room when Spock burst out of it on crutches. “General Smith has suffered a medical emergency,” he said, making way for them.

Smith lay just inside the door in a pool of too much blood. Mulcahy and Radar lay the stretcher out and rolled the man onto it, on his side to keep him from aspirating. Radar looked at Spock. “He’s type O. We’ll take him to Pre Op. Tell the first surgeon you find. I mean not Frank.”

Mulcahy took one end, while Radar took the other. They started back around the building. “Father?” Radar said.

“I’ve thought some uncharitable things about the general today.”

“I’m sure you didn’t cause this,” Mulcahy assured him.

“I know that,” Radar said. “I just.”

“Yes, Radar?”

“I try to be good, you know that, right?”

“Radar you try harder to be good than almost anyone here. We all fail to put the best foot forward from time to time.” 

They bumped through the door into Pre Op. Radar grabbed a scissors to start cutting off the general’s clothes. Houlihan and McCoy rushed in through the other door, the nurse already carrying four units of blood. “All right you two, what happened?”

“It’s his stomach,” Radar said. “He collapsed.”

Hawkeye arrived just as Houlihan was looking into Smith’s eyes and taking a pulse. “Spock said he thought the general was bleeding out.”

Mulcahy backed away, leaving the doctors room to work. He hooked Radar by the elbow to pull him along to the washroom. Once they got the blood off themselves, they moved on to the empty OR to wait for the doctors. “Father?” Radar said, once they were alone, “if I tell you something, do you have to keep it a secret even though I’m not Catholic?”

“I’ve always interpreted the seal of the confessional in that way.”

Radar swallowed. “The General told me to spy on Commander Spock and Captain, um, Lieutenant Commander McCoy.”

Mulcahy blinked. “Oh. I see.” 

“He wants me to tell him everything I know about them. And I don’t. I can’t. It’s not right. They’ve been so nice to me and the General—he’s just.”

“Terrifying?”

“Yeah.”

Radar studied the floor. “I mean I guess it doesn’t matter I’m dead in three weeks anyway what can he do to me before then…”

“Wait, Radar. Dead in three weeks?” Had the boy had a premonition?

Radar collapsed onto a folding chair. “I’m not sure. But something bad happens in three weeks and…”

Mulcahy wasn’t sure what to say. He just gestured for the boy to continue.

“Father, can I get into heaven? Do people like me even go to heaven? I mean it doesn’t matter I’ll still do my best anyway. That’s what the minister said I had to do.”

Mulcahy went down on his haunches beside Radar. “Slow down. What is this all about?”

Radar stared down at his hands where they were laced together between his knees. “When I was a kid I went to sleep away camp for church. It was supposed to make us better Methodists, I guess. And there was canoeing and hiking and campfires, but we were also supposed to you know, talk about stuff that worried us.” Radar was hunched in his chair now. “God stuff.”

“So I told them about how sometimes I know about things before they happen. And about you know, what people are thinking about. And the minister stood up and grabbed me by the arm and made me leave the campfire. He told me I was going to hell. That I was evil and I was consorting with demons. I ain’t never done anything with a demon, honest Father, that I know of. And then he put me in his truck and drove me all the way back home and left me at the farm. I slept in the barn that night so Ma and Uncle Ed wouldn’t know.”

It wasn’t the first time he’d been asked by someone if their very existence was an affront to God, though usually it was some young man who had found himself attracted to another young man. His heart went out to the kid. And he told him what he wished his own confessor had told him when he was fourteen. “Radar, you were made to be exactly who you are. God doesn’t make mistakes.”

He got a noncommittal shrug. “Radar, look at me.”

Radar did the thing he sometimes did where he looked without looking, his eyes aimed over Mulcahy’s left shoulder.

“Radar. I want you to understand something. You believe me to be a man of God, right?”

“You’ve never acted any different, and. And you believe. I know that.”

“On a good day I do,” he conceded. “Take my hands.”

“But I shouldn’t.”

“I want you to know I’m telling you the truth. Now look at me.” Mulcahy took the boy’s hands in his own. The back of his neck prickled and felt heavy, like his ears wanted to pop. He wondered if that was new, or if he just had never noticed before. 

Radar shrugged. “Sorry.” He swallowed and looked Mulcahy in the eye like he were waiting for a judge’s verdict.

Mulcahy focused on what he was trying to say. “Don’t apologize. You, Walter O’Reilly, are a kind, smart—don’t argue with me—smart, resourceful person and as much a part of the Body of Christ as I am. Okay?” He let Radar go. 

Radar sniffled. “Yes, Father.” He stood. “Four more units of O,” he said, then hurried off to the refrigeration unit.

The swinging doors admitted Smith, surrounded by Bones, Hawkeye, and Major Houlihan. Hawkeye caught Mulcahy’s eye. “I need four units of O, quick.”

“Radar’s already on it, sir.”

“Thank you, Father, then I advise you make yourself useful and pray. The General’s going to need it.” Hawkeye turned back to the other two. “Houlihan, you’re on anesthesia, Bones, assist. I’m assuming we’ve got a perforated ulcer here, but we should run the whole bowel, just in case. Can we use that tissue regenerator thing to repair his stomach lining?”

“Everything’s out of power. Spock’s got it all, trying to build something to charge them.”

Radar ran up to stand beside Houlihan, four jars of blood in his arms. She collected them from him and hooked one up to the IV. “You should be manning that radio,” she told him. “Father, stick around, we may need more blood.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Radar said, then slipped out through the double doors.

*

“Sir?” Radar said.

“Yes, Radar?” Spock replied without turning around.

Radar flipped on the radio and threaded another spool of tape through the reel to reel. “General Smith’s in surgery. Hawkeye said it’s probably a perforated ulcer.” He looked back at the doorway long enough to notice the mess had been cleaned up. “Oh, you didn’t have to do that. I could have taken care of it.”

“You had work of your own. Is Smith expected to survive surgery?”

Radar bit his lip. “Hawkeye was worried. I think his chances are good. Better than fifty fifty.”

“Nothing is settled,” Spock suggested.

“No,” Radar confirmed. “Um. He asked me to spy on you and Bones.”

Spock quirked an eyebrow. “I believe that informing the target of espionage is counter to the intent.”

Radar winced. “Can you say that again in smaller words?”

“I assume he did not intend you to tell me.”

“He forgot to say,” Radar said. “I’m no spy. Anyway, I have to make the reports. He made it an order. But I won’t write anything you know, private. I don’t think I want him to know you’ve been helping me with, um, stuff.”

“That is your decision.” Spock continued working while he spoke, the small soldering tool glowing between his fingers.

“I’m just a kid. And a corporal. I’m not used to making big decisions.”

“As the doctor would say, I am giving you a chance to grow into your shoes.”

“Right, sir. I’ll let you get back to work.” He put on his headphones and flipped on the subspace receiver. He’d decided he’d just flip through the channels in what ever order he liked, for as long as it occurred to him, and maybe he’d get some kind of clue where to listen to catch messages from spaceships that might be useful. He spun the dial, let it stop where it would, turned up the sound and listened to static.


	5. In which Mulcahy indulges the author's fondness for scriptural callouts.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mulcahy's Sunday morning service and a visit with the General in Post-Op.

Francis Mulcahy hurried to the mess tent to move his pulpit into place. This time last week he had offered a prayer for a swift and successful end to the war. Last night he sat outside his tent almost until dawn, looking up at the sky and wondering if the End Times were truly upon them, given the stars had broken out of their fixed places to dance in new patterns. He’d like to say he prayed, but the wordless ache he had offered up to that unfamiliar sky hardly qualified. Even St. Patrick’s Breastplate felt an insufficient comfort when he’d recited it in his tent at dawn. He had not yet worked up the courage to speak to any of their guests about spiritual matters, though he supposed he should.

Rumors abounded, contradictory and in the end useless. The strange men among them were demons. The world had been spirited away from the sun for purposes unknown, by God or the devil or some only slightly more prosaic monster. Anything that could move the heavens and Earth could be no more than a step below the Almighty after all. All that was known for sure was that the Koreans and Chinese had taken the celestial events as a cue to throw their efforts into stronger offensives. 

Francis owned very little, as could be expected given his vows, but what little he did own he’d moved from the drawers in his tent to his rucksack in the event they needed to evacuate quickly. He reasoned that if there were no time to pack for a proper bug out, he would have all the sacred items in his care safely on his person, and if there were more time, he could spend it helping others gather their own belongings.

Klinger arrived early, along with a couple of other guys, to help move the benches into position. Mulcahy allowed the activity to distract him from his ruminations for a few minutes. Rizzo set down his end of the bench and said, “Hey Klinger, hear you’re bunking with that one legged alien. Crazy.”

Klinger shrugged. “He picks up after himself, which is more than I can say about any of you.”

“Yeah, well, you two deserve each other,” a private said. “Place is full of freaks. No wonder they turned up here.”

“Hey, you watch your mouth, Private,” Rizzo said. “Us freaks stick together, you know.”

Mulcahy asked the Lord for patience at least until it was time to give his homily. Olive drab clad people trickled in, first in twos and threes and then in a rush just before eight o’clock. He had almost a full house. No surprise under the circumstances, he supposed. He caught sight of Bones, sitting a little awkwardly on one side of Houlihan while Frank sat on the other. She had scooted herself a few inches away from Frank in Bones’ direction. Sending a message perhaps? He dismissed the thought. The performative nature of the two Majors’ church attendance bothered him, especially when they were nearly alone in the tent of a Sunday morning, but he hoped that perhaps something of the Word would sink in eventually.

Radar slipped in at eight o’clock sharp to take a seat at the end of a row, next to Hawkeye, who never came to church. BJ squeezed in next to Hawkeye even though there was space enough not to squeeze. Radar popped open a folding chair for Spock to sit beside him. The alien commander drew stares and whispers, but answered them all with a serenely challenging look.

Mulcahy tapped the podium. “For our opening hymn today, we will be singing How Great Thou Art. It seemed appropriate.” Voices started in hesitantly this time, tripping on the words as their implications sank in, but rising on the refrain. By the final verse, most of the room was singing.

“I would like to begin today by acknowledging that we have been given evidence this week, twice, of powers far beyond our understanding. We see our way forward but through a glass, darkly.” He cleared his throat. “It is more important than ever that we remember who we are, and what kind of men and women we wish to be. Our first verse today comes from Hebrews 13, verses 1 and 2. ‘Let brotherly love continue. And be not forgetful to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.’”

A low, but unmistakeable mutter from the front row, “No pressure there,” gave him pause and he acknowledged it with a faint nod as chuckles broke out around Bones’ seat. 

“Three days ago the whole world changed, and we didn’t know, not right away, because it was a cloudy day and we had a lot to do. Three days ago three men, men you all know well, confronted the impossible, in the form of injured travelers in need of help. Not once did they stop to ask whether those travelers deserved help, they just did what they do best.”

“In these times we do well to consider how we behave toward one another.” He let his gaze rest on Frank for a moment. “It is easy, when confronted with uncertain times, to doubt ourselves and each other when we most need to depend on each other.”

“Our second reading for today is 1 Corinthians 12, verses 12-27.”

He waited for those soldiers and medics who had bibles to find the passage. Then read, slowly, fixing his gaze on different members of his congregation as he spoke the words.

“…And if the ear should say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason stop being part of the body,” he said, making sure he was looking directly at Radar, and by extension, Spock, who noted the attention and nodded, very slightly.

A few lines later, he fixed Frank Burns in his sights. “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you!’ And the head cannot say to the feet, ‘I don’t need you!’,” though he doubted the man, with his limited imagination, would understand at all what the verse was getting at.

Moving on he chastised himself for not giving Burns the benefit of forgiveness when he finished with, “ If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.”

“In times like these, we need to remind ourselves that we all need each other, and that each of us brings gifts to the table that are necessary and good. Let us be thankful, all of us, that we benefit from each other’s skill and dedication, no matter what challenges we may face.” He let his gaze fall on Hawkeye, Houlihan and McCoy, back to Spock more directly, and on General Clayton.

After the service, as he was tidying up, Radar approached him. “It’s too bad you went to all that trouble and General Smith couldn’t even be here.”

Mulcahy smiled. “I plan to visit the General in Post Op as soon as I finish here. I didn’t write that sermon for him.” He could be fairly sure his meaning came through loud and clear.

“You should hurry if you’re going to talk to him before the wounded start coming in. I heard Colonel Coner is in the area.”

“Oh dear. Thank you, Radar. That man--I mean, it’s important to show respect for the dead, but not by making more of them.”

Mulcahy walked with him back to where Spock was just rearranging himself on his crutches. “Thank you for coming today.”

“The Captain generally shoulders the greatest diplomatic burdens. Given that he is unable to do so, such duties fall to me. However, it is imperative that I return the doctor’s instruments to full functionality as soon as possible.”

“Of course. I need to visit with General Smith in Post Op.”

“He has promised the necessary materials to construct the transmitter. As such, his prejudices are not relevant to the mission, yet I find them concerning.”

“I will see if I can ensure that he keeps his promises,” Mulcahy told him. They separated, Radar and Spock to the radio room, Mulcahy to Post Op.

*

Smith awakened on a narrow bed, fluids running into his arm, the time traveling ship captain propped in the bed next to him, asleep. He coughed, his throat dry and aching, winced at pain just under his ribcage, a deep aching wrongness along with a sharp, stinging pinch every time he breathed. For once he wasn’t nauseous. He turned to see Captain Pierce and a black nurse sitting by his bedside. “You’re damn lucky,” the skinny surgeon said. “We used sixteen units on you. Hope you appreciate that. Your doctor never tell you Pepto Bismol’s a blood thinner?”

“What happened?” he managed to whisper. “What did they…?”

“Perforated duodenum. You nearly bled to death on the table.” He reached down to squeeze Smith’s feet. “You feel that?”

Smith nodded. “I went to talk to that alien. He must have done something to me.”

Hawkeye huffed. “What he did was as close as I’ve ever seen to running on crutches. He got Bones and me from the mess tent while Radar and Mulcahy collected you from where you fell on Radar’s floor. Tell you what. I’m going to top off your morphine and you get some rest.”

Smith closed his eyes. A blink, he thought, then opened them to see Spock, seated between himself and the captain, talking in a low voice to the other man, words he couldn’t make out and sounded like they might not be in English. He blinked again. 

A fair haired man wearing a collar and cross perched on the chair set up between himself and the injured time traveler, Kirk, he now recalled. Good. His head was clearing. He still felt distanced from his own body, floating on morphine and the aftereffects of blood loss. It made him feel as though he were helpless in enemy territory. He let his eyes rest on the priest’s cross. “They tried to kill me,” he said.

“Is that what you really believe?” The voice, so gentle, still held an edge. The priest might look soft, but he wasn’t weak. 

“If you wanted to take me out of commission,” Smith reasoned.

“You were in surgery for hours. They both operated. Hawkeye and Bones. I doubt they would have put so much effort in if they’d wanted you dead.” 

“He’s an alien and a Sodomite,” he tried to inject vitriol into the words, but he was too tired. 

The chaplain winced. Had he not wanted to be reminded? Smith assumed the man knew. Mulcahy sighed, heavily. “The Lord has sent us a sword and shield against whatever may come. Is it wise to suspect the packaging?”

“It’s always intelligent to be suspicious.”

Mulcahy regarded him quietly for a moment. “There is a vast gulf between intelligence and wisdom. Perhaps you have been given an opportunity to slow down and learn the difference.”

Like many of the religious, he was something of a child, seeing the good in every man, even those who had little good in them. Even Smith himself. He had sacrificed his own goodness on the altar of patriotism long ago. Sometimes to save his country, individual lives had to be forfeit. And his principles had to fall to expediency. “Be careful,” he said. Then he found he had to close his eyes again.

The next time he opened them, he was alone except for the injured captain, who turned his head toward him without raising it off the pillow. “What happened to you, General?”

“Bit of digestive trouble, they said. Bleeding ulcer.”

“Maddening, being stuck in bed like this, isn’t it? At least I know I can trust Spock and Bones to do their best in my place.”

Smith nodded. He’d have to trust Clayton and Potter to do the same. And the strange little clerk. All of whom were competent enough, in their way. But he wasn’t sure of them. Would they do what was right by America, or would they listen to men who might not have America—Earth, even—might not have Earth’s best interests at heart. “You’ll forgive me if I’m not reassured.”

Blink.

And then he was anything but alone. The groans of wounded men surrounded him, nurses bustled about, a doctor took his wrist in hand, pressed a stethoscope to his chest, spoke words that made no sense through the haze of a fresh shot of morphine.

Blink.


End file.
